The Case of the Missing Socks
by reflecting
Summary: Sherlock/John pairing. A pair of mismatched socks can be more meaningful and important than you'd think. T for language.


**Pairing: **Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

**Warning: **English is not my first language, this is un-betaed, and it is my very first Sherlock Holmes fanfiction.

**Notes: **This was written for my dear darling _shizuka-ame_ whom I hold dear and who have a weakness for BBC!Holmes/Watson domestics. This ended up being something really silly, however, but I hope she will like it nonetheless! :)

Enjoy!

(I've fixed a few typos, but I don't know if I caught them all. Sorry!)

* * *

_**Preface**_

_John Watson's Private, Unpublished Blog _

_(Things that happen to me, but aren't things for others to read)_

_31.3.2011_

I used to have a girlfriend before all this. Before the war and the wound, the pink suitcase, Sarah and wild chases through the streets of London; before _Sherlock. _Well, that is only partially true, I guess. I mean, it is true, but I've had more than just _one_ girlfriend. I've had a few, over the years; some more serious than others. But anyway, with the last girlfriend, Sally, it was serious. You know, we lived together, did things together, her friends became mine and vice versa. We had these _moments_, you know? She did the dishes and I dried them, Saturday night was pizza night, she washed the clothes and I the toilet. That kind of thing. It never really _meant _anything. I mean, it was never anything _special_ about it; it was just…normal, like brushing your teeth in the morning. So things like that became routine, became part of what you referred to as the "mundane" whenever you complained about what a grey, boring day it was. Of course, I kind of missed it after we broke up and I was sent off to Afghanistan. I missed a lot of things back there.

But anyway, thing is, it was never that special. It was just the idea of being with someone when doing these things that appealed to me, I realize. But even so, I never thought about it. Recently, however, I _have_ thought about it. Ever since Sherlock.

It didn't take long for me to identify Baker Street 221B as _home_, or Sherlock as a…collogue? Friend? I don't think I have a word for what he was to me in the beginning. Nothing is ever as it should be with Sherlock, or at least how one would expect it to be. I never got used to him, he still feels novel. I just…_accepted _him rather quickly. From all that he said, did and dragged me into at first (and still does, mind you), I should've done the opposite of sitting back to enjoy the ride. Before I met him, I would never have thought I'd let someone like him drive that ride. I sometimes wonder if this is because of the war, or if I'd met him after Sally it would've been the same mad down spiral of sanity.

But I digress.

The thing with Sherlock is that there are equal amounts of routine as there is chaos. There is routine and order in his mood; engaging work have him excited like a little schoolboy, but a lack of it ends with him sulking in the couch until something piques his interest again. Of course, it's utterly unpredictable what he might find worth pursuing among the cases he receives, as it seems to never be based on the same reasons whenever he chooses a new one. And of course, each case is different, some more than others, and in a long line of consequences this means every day is unlike the other in some way. Sometimes there's a corpse, sometimes a boudoir and a stolen diamond. Sometimes he needs me more than others, and I work more or less hours at the hospital. And sometimes there are guns and fists, while some days it's Sherlock on the couch muttering about the stupidity of the rest of all humanity. I usually use these downtimes to stock up the fridge and freezer, as long as they're free of limbs (human or otherwise). I do the laundry, the dishes, and vacuum, dust and end the day with a good book whenever work let me.

It's a little bit like those mundane, everyday things you're supposed to do end up being something you have to think about. You have to go "oh, and I should probably do some laundry before we're off again", or else it won't get done. Then you do it, and it seems like ages ago you did it last. It's a little bit like working with Sherlock is the war (minus a lot of the unpleasantness of course, this is hypothetical) and what used to be normal are those things you miss but aren't really that extraordinary when you actually find yourself doing them again.

But then, with Sherlock, things aren't always as they should be, or as you'd expect them to be.

We are lovers now, or, well, whatever you'd call it; I'm not sure. I mean, of course I'm sure, we've _had_ that talk (and wasn't that an interesting experience…). So Sherlock says we're partners, but personally I think that applies more on his work. I digress. Lovers living together, laudry; it sounds a bit like Sally. It should be a bit like with Sally. But it isn't. Because of the whole war-metaphor. Because of Sherlock, a broken washing machine and two pairs of socks.

Specifically, Sherlock, a broken washing machine and one missing sock each of two pairs.

Let's call it…

* * *

_**The Case of the Missing Socks.**_

* * *

It began with one of Sherlock moods. It had been a week of running around London and catching a swindler selling fake paintings from Belgium. I was down to two shirts, one pair of socks, one pair of jeans and three boxers and ready to crawl out of my skin at the thought of the mass of dirty clothing piling up. Sherlock wasn't fond of bad hygiene either, but he has a tendency to get utterly consumed by whatever case he's on, and when he's off and without a promising prospect of another promising case, I don't think he'd care if someone dumped a bucket of the Thames' water on him. At least, that's what it seems like. Anyway, point is, he didn't particularly care that he only had two boxers and one pair of briefs left, and had worn the same pair of socks and shirt four days in a row. I, however, did and so almost looked forward to the chore of getting all the laundry done.

Of course, at the first load of clothes, the old washing machine let out a suspicious screech before it died with a bang, leaving a mess of water on the floor that took a good while to clean up. For the first time in ages, I was forced to go and look up a Laundromat. Sherlock stayed on the couch, fiddling with his violin, of course, but I had expected little else.

Now, Laundromats are extraordinary _boring_. After dragging the insane amount of laundry there, you pounce whichever machine is free, and keep an eye out for a second and sometimes a third, unless you want to stay there the rest of the day. I was lucky; two were free upon my arrival and after loading them up to the brim, with about two more loads left, I sat back to wait. And wait. It's all about waiting, really. Waiting and having numbing conversations with the other occupants. I've learned to not reveal I'm a doctor, or else the old ladies will start on endless speeches describing their medical conditions, the quality of health care, the expenses, and really, it's just not worth it.

Another typical thing with Laundromats is that somehow, you always lose _something_. Usually a sock or two, or some underwear. This time, it was one of my blue- and grey-striped socks, and another brown-and grey sock. Not much of a loss, considering the insane amount of clothes I had to wash that day. Job well done, I thought, so I returned home and cleaned up the kitchen, forced Sherlock to take a shower (which he dragged me into, and which I did not mind, at all), and ended the day with a good book, as per usual. Two days later, things were once again set into motion due to an anomaly. Well, a sort of anomaly, I guess.

I had slept in a bit too generously that morning, and just grabbed the clothes nearest to me, ending with me slipping on an odd pair of socks; one blue-and grey-striped and another brown-and grey. As I entered the kitchen, where Sherlock was waiting with a cup of coffee and toast, I briefly wondered if he'd even come to bed as I had no memory of it, but dismissed it in order to consume the small breakfast.

Sherlock eyed me with a narrow expression, taking everything in, as he does naturally with everything. "Good morning," I said, swallowing down the toast with a mouthful of coffee of perfect temperature (how Sherlock manages that without a thermometer, I don't even want to know at this point. Probably some mathematical formula for how long it takes the coffee to cool off).

"Good morning John," he replied with that smooth voice of his. There was no sign of gravel for having woken up recently, which I missed, because it happens so rarely, but I digress. "I see that you had trouble sleeping. You forgot you had an early shift today, despite the bold, red letters that's been scribbled here on the whiteboard reminding you all week. And by the state of your clothing…is something bothering you, John?"

You see, the thing with _me_ is that I am what people call a military man, for obvious reasons. But this means I have certain habits; neatness is one of them. I don't know if I've always had it, or if it's something I've learned. Anyway, I don't mismatch socks, apparently. It's nothing I think about, really. But Sherlock does; of course he would.

"_The state of my clothing?_ What? And no, no; nothing's bothering me," I replied, confused, because I had at the time no idea what he was going on about; as usual. I also, as is best when dealing with Sherlock, chose to ignore at least half of his observations.

"The mismatched socks," he pointed out, in _that _voice, which meant he was deducing out loud for you to hear whether you liked it or not. "They are either a sign of getting dressed too quickly to bother with a detail such as matching your socks; perhaps you reached for whatever was closest and had yet to fold every pair of socks from this weeks' laundry, or…

The washing machine broke, so this time you did the laundry at a Laundromat, all the way over at Cromer Street judging by the time it took you to come back home that day. A common occurrence when doing laundry at one of these places seems to be the disappearance of clothing, specifically socks. Of course, they do not disappear, people are simply too lazy and blind to properly look for them in the machine, on the floor, or inside another article of clothing.

Since you genuinely do not seem to be bothered by anything other than the usual, the latter is more likely than the former. There is also the fact that you seemed to be in such hurry, but apparently not enough to warrant a mismatch of socks on your part, if you still haven't left for work by now."

I have taken to using my phone to record some of Sherlock's longer monologues when they amuse me, confound me, or annoy me (or all together, and then some), if only to have the satisfaction of deleting them later.

As it were, his last words had snapped me out of the daze of it's-too-early-for-this and I managed a heartfelt "Bloody hell" before storming out of the flat.

I was late, of course, and although Sarah was not happy, she seemed to assume it was somehow Sherlock's fault, which, indeed, it was. Completely.

(Sherlock just has this annoying way of capturing people's attention when he speaks, and so, I can rarely walk away mid-speech unless I'm really pissed and motivated to do so).

This is where it should've ended, really. What more could a pair of socks do? _With Sherlock, you never know_. It's a re-occurring thing I keep telling myself, but which never really sticks, and so I'm continuously surprised, and again, there's the whole story with the mundane and the normal suddenly becoming something that's not normal, something that's rather extraordinary actually. And this is how:

I came home late, having stayed to work extra in order to make up for coming in late that morning. Dinner stood cold on the table with the dirty dishes of a finished meal left by the sink, but I wasn't hungry, and felt more like collapsing in bed and catching up on the sleep I had missed to restless dreams the previous night. Sherlock was nowhere to be found; the couch had only his robe and some pillows strew across the floor, as if he'd thrown the robe off and jumped up letting the pillows fly. Perhaps he'd had one of his ideas, perhaps there was a new case, and perhaps he wasn't at home. The thought had disappointed me, as it always kind of does, especially when checking my phone to find no new texts summoning me on whatever crazy crusade he was on.

It was then a pleasant surprise to enter our (well, it's mine, really, but there's a king-sized bed now instead of a single; Sherlock still has his own room for those times when he is too much for either of us to handle for any extended period of time. It was his idea) and find him stretched out over the bed. I didn't notice it at first, too busy eying him to try and gauge if he was in a mood that permitted just collapsing over him and steal a kiss, but in his hands he was fiddling with two pair of socks. Specifically, _my _pair of socks. The missing socks. The mismatched socks. Yes, those socks.

By the time I noticed, I was already out of my shoes and socks and woolen sweater; only jeans and a t-shirt left when I sank down in bed beside him.

"Sherlock, what are you doing with my socks?"

"I am examining them."

"Examining them…for what? No, wait, forget that; where the hell did you get them from?"

"Faced with a case of a pair of mismatched socks on my otherwise very neat military Doctor, I decided sometime around midday to investigate if this was a case of sock-eating gnomes or simple human laziness. I was confronted with a choice; I could go to the Laundromat. Here, I would have to hope for someone to have found the socks and left them in the pile of forgotten clothes, or else the chances of finding them would indeed be a grueling process of finding which automats you used, at what time you finished, and then finding access to the security camera in order to have a face for whoever used it after you. Provided I get a hold of such a picture, I would ask around the regulars to see if this person came there often, and if they know who they where and when they usually frequented the Laundromat; if it were the same time as it had been that time, or if it changed.

I would then proceed to come in contact with this person, asking if he or she by any chance had recently gained possession of an additional two socks. If they had not, then there is still a chance they are somewhere with this person, or somewhere with another, have the Laundromat already been searched.

This would lead me to my second option, one which I chose from the beginning for obvious reason. I looked through the all the clothing you had washed and searched them for the socks; inside pant-legs, t-shirts, shirts, pillowcases….

The conclusion of the case came with finding the striped one was in the pant-leg of my oldest pair of slacks, and this brown one in the unfortunately discolored pillowcase of yours."

By this point, I had gone through several reactions; understanding of the state of the couch, horror when I realized the state of the room with clothes _everywhere,_ surprise something like _socks_ had managed to make him move and bother thinking up something like this, amusement at the length and detail of his rant, and a rather satisfied feeling of warmth as it all came together.

While he never dries the dishes or do the laundry, or have a designated Pizza Night, Sherlock is rather amazing. He turned a pair of socks into a case that couldn't have lasted more than perhaps a minute or two that morning when he first spotted my mismatched socks, and an hour to complete by going through all the clothes, and I think that is rather a bit more endearing than sorting through dirty underwear.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I digress.

So ends _the Case of the Missing Socks_, with no good book, but with a bloody good shag.

* * *

**End notes: **Thanks for reading! :D


End file.
